38 minutes of stoppage time
The day started out pretty normal, if a bit evil. I looked at my schedule for the morning, and it read:18
18
18
Ack! I had two 18 boys lines, followed by an 18 girls center, which would be my now newly required maintenance assessment. Fortunately, it turned out the assignor was no sadist, and the lines turned out pretty stress-free.
The first game was the more intense one in the bunch , with one team needing only a tie to make it into the next round of the tournament - but the ended up losing badly. Players, one thing to keep in mind when dealing with referees - just because you're fouled, it doesn't mean that the ref didn't see it, but may rather think you have a further advantage if you keep playing. Normally you hear "Advantage" or "Play on" called out, but the advantage clause doesn't include the assistant referees, so out options are to talk to the players - and sometimes, if the action is too tight, we might not even get that far (this also applies to center referees). However, after the advantage is applied (announced or not), anything you choose to do it another incident entirely. Case in point: a player one one team, who has frequently run down the flank in front of me, has been charged several times, but has always played through it to his advantage - if it's a foul or not is borderline, but his momentum and ball control are undeniable; most of the time, I just talk him through it, saying something to the effect of, "Play through it, white!". The one time I don't do this, he continues to play through, but 10 yards later, keeps running instead of cutting left, giving a defender a chance to slide in front of him and take the ball; the striker pushes and I flag the foul.
"Why didn't you call the the first one?"
"Because you'd be pissed off I took away your opportunity. Two instances, two decisions, not one."
Two instances, two different situations, two points in time.
The second game was just fun. Both teams, as it turned out, were out of the competition, and this was their final round robin game. Absolutely amazing for eighteen year-old boys: they laughed at their own teammates, they laughed with their opponents, they even hammed it up at times. They even let the refs get into the act from time-to-time:
"I can't be offside!" he said in semi-mock shock.
"Oh, yes!"
"No!"
With an exaggerated nod and a shit-eating grin, "Yes!"
"No!"
"Yes!" Now the parents were getting into the act.
Less than a minute later, the defense attempts what would normally be a poorly executed trap - done well before the ball was kicked, but that same player was oblivious. Up went the flag, and he looked at me, and I said, "They went back 10 seconds ago" bringing a laugh.
Strangely enough, they didn't trap again. There was a winner, but you would never know it (except for the good-natured razzing toward the replacement goalkeeper who let the game-winner slip though his fingertips... and between his legs) - both teams just enjoyed playing, for playing's sake.
Next, after a bit of a break, came my center, an 18-girls game - one team needed to win, the other was playing spoiler - so it was anybody's guess on how they would come out playing. I would content that, when properly played, you can run as much on a girls game as with a boys - because with girls the trick (or so I've been told) is to go wide-wide-wide; this is what I try to do, because there generally is a lot more flank play than with boys. You don't normally have to go as deep with girls, although I found myself getting pretty deep on a number of occasions in this (paradoxically, I've found that the older the team, the less running you have to do: mostly because when the players get older, they suddenly discover the midfield, so there's far less shifting of end-to-end).
The game itself went pretty well, and was pretty well dominated by the blue team (the team who was still in the competition), already up a couple of goals, when the 30th minute came around, and it happened. From my angle, there looked like a pretty minor challenge upon one of blue's midfielders, even though she was knocked down. I call out, "No foul!" but the player lets out a cry of her own - I'm not far from the play (maybe 10 yards), so I run over and see that her kneecap looks very much like it's in the wrong place.
For some reason, I always find myself pretty calm in these types of situations - when I was a twelve or thirteen, a friend of mine, on a sleepover, brought in a butterfly knife that he was fiddling with, and ended up sliding the palm of his hand pretty good (from the webbing down, in fact). While he was screaming, I calmly went up the stairs, and said, "Mom, dad, we need to take Jon to the hospital - he sliced his hand open"). I did pretty much the same thing: I immediately called the coach in, then continued down the touchline to the opposite coach, and asked him to find the field marshall for me and call a medic. Fortunately, she was in hearing distance, and started radioing in immediately.
However, things did not look good. The assistant-coach for that player, and the AR both agreed that she tripped over the ball and landed badly, not from any challenge; the coach also said she had some pretty beat up knees. It looked like I as the referee was blameless, but it was still a tense situation. Time passed, and more paramedics that were working at the tournament rolled in, and they inserted an IV into the player, still on the field. The assistant coach told the senior AR (who then told me - in these situations, the general positioning is that AR1 keeps track of players from the near bench, the center referee keeps track of those on the far bench, the the AR2 just looks on helplessly - actually he looks for any goings on on the field, but in this case the former applies) that they were unable to get the leg back into place because she was so tense, and they couldn't move her until they did that.
A referee on an adjoining field, tried to lighten up the mood a bit by quipping quietly, "You know, good referees keep their fields on time." I snapped and said it wasn't funny, but apologized later. I know from my previous volunteer experience that you laugh or go crazy (it's on the reasons referees tell so many "war stories") - I just wasn't there at that time.
Thirty minutes later, another set of paramedics arrive, this time in an ambulance. This is the second time, I've had a player go off in an ambulance. The first was last year, at the State Cup, when a coach played one player the entire game (but didn't have to, they didn't have limited substitutions at that age), and I failed to see the symptoms of heat exhaustion (a poor way to learn, but learn I did, and might have stopped a similar situation at this year's USA Cup). I'm not sure, since all indications say that this wasn't rough play or poor judgment - but merely one of those things that happen to players in freak moments.
The paramedics put her on a backboard, and got her onto the ambulance gurney, 37 minutes after it all started, and I asked the coach if he wanted some time for his team. No, he said, start the game right away. So 38 minutes after the injury happened, we resumed the game in the 68th minute, but still in the first half.
The rest of the game was pretty pedestrian. I ran well, the tenor of the game, while a little tepid at first, picked up to it's normal intensity after a few minutes - and the second half went on as normal (although I had a very confused referee look at me when I was near him, wondering when I'd actually turn over the field to him). It ended much the way it started, a pretty one-sided game. Although, just before I blew the final whistle, I could hear a familiar song: "Na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, good-bye" - it was from the team that was down, now six-to-nothing. They were ready to end the game, and it seemed a good time to oblige them. They didn't want to play, and I'm sure the other side didn't want to risk another injury.
I want to end this entry with something profound, something I learned - but nothing is coming. I don't think there was anything I could have done to prevent it, and I think all sides knew it. Maybe the best thing you can do in a situation like that, is just start back up again, as soon as possible.